Affiliate program terms
What you earn, how credit is decided, when you are paid, and what we ask of you. These terms apply from the day your application is approved.
Last updated August 27, 2026. They sit alongside our terms of service, which apply to your account either way.
Who can join
The program is open to US taxpayers only. You confirm this when you apply, and Stripe collects your taxpayer details when you set up payouts. You must have a HoofnHorn account, and approval is required.
What you earn
You earn a share of the closing fee HoofnHorn collects on a sale. You never earn a share of the animal’s price, and that money never passes through us.
20% of our closing fee when a seller you referred sells an animal, for 12 months from the day that seller creates their account. Every sale in that window earns.
10% of our closing fee when a buyer you referred wins an auction, for 12 months from the day that buyer creates their account. Each auction they win in that window earns once.
Our closing fee is capped at $2,500 per sale, so your commission on any one sale is capped with it. The fee rate varies by seller, and your share follows the fee we actually collect. If a seller is on a reduced rate, your commission is a share of that reduced fee.
How credit is decided
Credit is settled once, when someone creates their account, and never revisited.
If they enter a referral code while signing up, that code is credited. Otherwise we credit whoever’s link they clicked first, for 60 days after that click. If neither applies, nobody is credited.
A person can be referred once. There is no way to add or change a code after an account exists.
What counts is a real person deciding for themselves. They followed your link or typed your code because they wanted what we sell. Anything that sets the cookie or enters the code on their behalf is not a referral, however it looks in the numbers.
You cannot refer yourself, and that holds however the account is arranged. Not a second account of your own, not someone in your household, not a business you control, and not somebody doing it for you. Buying through your own link for another person is the same thing. If whoever is on the other side stands to share in what you earn, it is not a referral.
When you are paid
A commission is held for 60 days after the sale it came from. That window is for refunds and disputes, which surface later here than on an ordinary online order, because the buyer has to travel and collect an animal first.
After the hold, the commission becomes payable. We pay monthly, by bank transfer through Stripe, once your payable balance is at least $100. A smaller balance rolls to the next month. You need to connect a Stripe account before we can pay you; Stripe handles the identity checks, your bank details and your tax forms, and we never see your bank account.
If we have good reason to think a commission came from a broken rule, we may hold payment on it while we look into it. If it clears, it is released in full and paid on the next normal run. Nothing is forfeited because of the delay.
You are responsible for the tax on what you earn. We will provide the tax documentation the law requires of us, and Stripe collects the details needed for it during onboarding.
If a sale is refunded
A commission only exists because a sale completed. If that sale is refunded, the commission is reversed.
If it had not been paid out yet, it simply is not paid. If it had, the amount is deducted from your next payout, and your dashboard shows what is outstanding. A payout that was later reversed stays in your payout history: it is a record of what was sent.
What you must disclose
You must tell people you earn from your link. US law requires it, and it applies wherever you share: posts, videos, livestreams, podcasts, email, and your bio.
Put it where the link is, before it, in plain words a listener or reader takes in without effort. “I earn a commission if you sign up through this link” is enough. A hashtag buried in a wall of others is not, and neither is a disclosure a viewer has to tap to expand. If you are speaking rather than writing, say it aloud.
If a platform offers a paid-partnership label, switch it on as well. It does not replace saying so yourself.
How you may promote us
Share your link with people who would genuinely want to know. That is the whole rule, and the list below is what it excludes.
- Bidding on HoofnHorn brand terms in paid search, or running ads that could be mistaken for ours.
- Unsolicited bulk email, texts, or messages. Every contact must be someone who agreed to hear from you.
- Buying, farming, or automating clicks, accounts, or bids.
- Setting the referral cookie without a real click, by any means.
- Offering cash back or rebates for using your code.
- Claiming to speak for HoofnHorn, or describing yourself as an employee or agent.
- Stating rates, fees, or guarantees we have not published.
- Coupon, deal, or discount-code sites, which do not bring us buyers we did not already have.
You may say what our animals and our marketplace actually are. You may use our name and wordmark to link to us. You may not alter them, and you may not register domains, handles, or business names containing them.
Ending it
You can stop at any time. We can suspend or end your participation at any time, and we will tell you when we do.
Commissions you have already earned are honoured. They finish their hold and are paid on the normal cycle. What stops is new ones: your referrals stay in our records, and no further commission is created from them.
We may withhold or reverse a commission we have good reason to believe came from a broken rule above, or from a sale that was not genuine.
If you think we have got one of these decisions wrong, email us and say why. We will look at it again. What we decide after that second look is final.
Changes
We may change these terms, and we will post the new version here with a new date. A rate change is never retroactive: commissions already earned keep the rate they were earned at, and a new rate applies only from the day it takes effect.
Questions about any of this belong in an email to us, and we would rather answer one before you build a campaign on an assumption. Your affiliate dashboard shows your own rates, your referrals and what you have earned.